Before the theocratic government of today’s Iran, there was the brutal Shah. Before the Shah, the CIA overthrew a pro-Western government that had been democratically elected. Mohammad Mossadegh was the prime minister and his US-backed downfall in 1953 was the spark that set in motion the conflict with Iran today. In this interview, Medea Benjamin sheds light on this seminal incident with Iran. She also explores the nation’s history and politics.
Read the full interview here.
Hilary Wainwright, co-editor of Red Pepper magazine and fellow of the Transnational Institute, has been a significant figure on the left of the Labour Movement since the heyday of the GLC. Her latest book A New Politics from the Left (Polity) reflects on the recent reinvigoration of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn, and presents a grass-roots up vision of the future that is both profoundly radical and entirely practical. She was in conversation about her book, and the future of the left in Britain, with journalist, activist and author Melissa Benn, and Alex Nunns, author of The Candidate (OR Books).
Listen to the full conversation here.
GAMEC HANGER is the annual conference of the European Centre for Press and Media Freedom on 28 -29 May 2018 in Leipzig. Its theme is the controversial role of new technology in the future of media freedom. To inform debate, ECPMF is publishing several articles. In an interview with former WikiLeaks editor Sarah Harrison, who helped whistleblower Edward Snowden to escape to Russia, ECPMF discusses the issues raised in her new book “Women, whistleblowing and WikiLeaks“, published by OR Books.
Read the full interview here.
This week I’m joined by Alex Nunns, author of The Candidate: Jeremy Corbyn’s Improbable Path to Power to discuss the Labour Party after the local elections, the balance of power within the PLP, and the prospects for a new centrist party.
Listen to the full interview here.
Norman Finkelstein says that Israeli forces have conducted “a murderous assault on non-violent protesters” in Gaza’s Great March of Return because non-violent protest threatens not Israel, but its occupation.
Watch the full interview here.
For more than a decade, Gaza—a narrow strip along the Mediterranean coast—has been subjected to a suffocating economic siege. The siege was imposed by Israel and its international accomplices after the election of the Hamas government in 2006, as a form of ‘economic warfare’. The objective was to cripple Gaza’s economy in the hopes that the suffering thereby inflicted would induce Gaza’s civilian population—70 percent of whom are refugees and more than half of whom are children—to turn against their rulers.
To this end, the flow of goods as well as people across Gaza’s perimeter was reduced to the bare minimum. The guiding principle was explained by one of the architects of Israel’s Gaza policy, Dov Weisglass: ‘It’s like a diet—the Palestinians will lose lots of weight, but they won’t die’. That is, humanitarian aid would be allowed entry but the inputs required for a functioning economy would be blocked. International human rights organisations have unsurprisingly condemned this mediaeval-like policy as a ‘collective punishment’ (International Committee of the Red Cross) imposed in ‘flagrant violation of international law’ (Amnesty International).
Read the full article here.
n May 14,1948, seventy years ago, Israel issued its “declaration of independence.” Since then, every May 15 has been Nakba Day, when Palestinians mark the ethnic cleansing of their people entailed by the creation of Israel. This Nakba Day will feature the culmination of the Great Return March, when Palestinians will march en masse to the fence Israel erected to separate Gaza and Israel and say that they intend to try to pass through the barrier. As of this writing, Israel has already killed at least 52 Palestinian demonstrators in what Amnesty International has called “an abhorrent violation of international law,” involving “what appear to be willful killings constituting war crimes.”
Like other settler colonial states, Israel aims to asphyxiate the socially reproductive capacities of the indigenous populations it seeks to dominate. That imperative is particularly urgent in the Israeli case, where the Jewish and non-Jewish populations under the state’s control are of comparable size and the land in question is relatively small. This discriminatory denial of rights extends to Palestinians across the globe, whether they live as second-class citizens of Israel, under occupation, in the diaspora or in refugees camps. All are prevented from returning to their homes through the use of violence and with decisive help from the US.
Read the full article here.
Jesse Ventura and Brigida Santos discuss the importance of diplomacy when it comes to North Korea and Iran. Author and Code Pink activist, Medea Benjamin, discusses her book, “Inside Iran: the Real History and Politics of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” Benjamin shares the history of America’s relationship with Iran and weighs in on the fate of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action—the Iran Nuclear Deal.
The interview begins after 11 minutes and can be seen in full here.
In a new book, “Moment of Truth,” Sari Bashi discusses the 11-year blockade that has driven Gazans to the brink. With water unfit to drink, denial of education, healthcare and mobility, Gazans don’t have much to lose, she says.
Watch the full interview here.
For over a decade, the Gaza Strip has been subjected to a brutal, medieval-style siege. Imposed by Israel after the election of the Hamas government in 2006, the stated objective of the siege was “economic warfare”: to block all economic activity in Gaza and thereby turn the civilian population against its leadership.
To this end, imports were restricted to what Israeli bureaucrats deemed a humanitarian necessity, while exports were almost completely prohibited. At the same time, the number of exit permits issued to Gazans was sharply reduced. As their economy suffocated and living standards plunged, the people of Gaza, hemmed in from the land, air and sea, were unable even to flee. In effect, Gaza was transformed – in the words of former UK Prime Minister David Cameron – into a “prison camp”.
Read the full article here.
The debate in the New York Times and Washington Post over President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), better known as the Iran deal, revolves around which tactics America should use to dominate Iran.
Read the full article here.
On this episode of Fault Lines, hosts Garland Nixon and Lee Stranahan discuss Rudy Giuliani’s return to the spotlight since joining President Trump’s legal team. In addition to comments regarding Stormy Daniels, Giuliani spoke in favor of regime change in Iran as the Trump administration seeks to address both foreign and domestic policy challenges.
The interview with Medea starts at 2 hours and 15 minutes. You can listen to the full interview here.
Corporate media help set the terms of debate about the issues they cover by pointing toward specific sets of questions and ignoring others. When news outlets highlight particular points of contention, they encourage audiences to see these as the central aspects of the story and discourage consideration of other facets of the topic. Recent reporting on the Palestinians’ Great Return March offers a case study in how news media establish truncated, distorted parameters of discussion.
Read the full article here.
Iran has a long history of interacting with the rest of the world—initially as the various empires discussed in earlier chapters, and now as the Islamic Republic. The resentment and suspicion of foreign interference found in the Iranian political culture are a direct result of historic deals with foreigners that took power away from the local elites, including bazaaris and the clerics.
Through the 1800s to the early half of the 1900s, Russia and Britain were the main foreign interventionist forces and therefore became the focus of the public’s vitriol. As the 20th century evolved, the United States began playing a larger role in Iran, due primarily to Cold War dynamics. As American policy in Iran came to resemble the earlier Russian and British imperial policies, anger towards the United States grew. That resentment boiled over and was a key factor in the 1979 revolution.
Read the full excerpt here.
On 12 May, President Trump will decide whether or not to stay in the Iran nuclear deal. If the US pulls out, as Trump has threatened to do, we could be careening down the path of another catastrophic, senseless war in the Middle East. That’s why the countervailing forces of European leaders, the UN, the US Congress and the American public are so pivotal.
The US already made a catastrophic blunder in Iran, a blunder that is still reverberating six decades later. In a foreign policy speech delivered in September 2017, Senator Bernie Sanders talked about the 1953 CIA coup that toppled Iran’s elected prime minister, Mohammad Mosaddegh, on behalf of western oil interests, and the reinstallation of the corrupt, brutal and unpopular Shah.
Read the full article here.
Is Silicon Valley going to war? In 2013, Amazon beat IBM for a contract to host the United States intelligence community’s data cloud. Microsoft now markets Azure Government Secret, its cloud-computing service designed specifically for federal and local governments, to the Defense Department and intelligence agencies. And last year, Google signed a contract with the Pentagon for Project Maven, a pilot program to accelerate the military’s use of artificial intelligence.
Read the full article here.
Fail better. I am not sure any writer is more identifiable by two words than Samuel Beckett is by these. Though first occurring in one of his late, little-known works, the phrase has nonetheless come to be a rallying cry for athletes and entrepreneurs alike. Richard Branson and Elon Musk cite them. A tennis star has the phrase tattooed on his forearm. “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.”
Read the full article here.
BEN NORTON: It’s the Real News. I’m Ben Norton. Just when it looked like the war in Syria might finally be coming to an end, the Donald Trump administration has announced new plans to maintain U.S. military influence in the country.
The Wall Street Journal reported this week that the United States is trying to assemble an army of foreign troops to militarily occupy territory in northeast Syria. There are between 2,000 and 4,000 U.S. troops who are already in Syria, although their presence is illegal under international law. These U.S. troops are mostly concentrated in the northeast, near the border of Iraq.
Watch the full video here.
As Adam Johnson (FAIR.org, 4/9/18) writes, media have engaged in extraordinary mental gymnastics to describe the Israeli military’s deliberate killing of Palestinian protesters in the Great Return March, framing long-distance sniper shootings as “clashes” in order to misleadingly “give the reader the impression of two equal warring sides.
Read the full article here.
Julian Assange has been silenced again, and the timing is most suspicious. With the Cambridge Analytica story dominating the news, it seems some powerful people have reasons to keep the brave WikiLeaks boss quiet right now.
Ecuador is a small country, and one can only imagine the brutal behind-the-scenes pressure exerted on it by Western powers to increase the isolation of Julian Assange from the public space. Now, his internet access has been cut off and many of his visitors are refused access, thus rendering a slow social death to a person who’s spent almost six years confined to an apartment at the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
Istanbul Istanbul, a novel by Burhan Sönmez and translated from Turkish by Ümit Hussein, has won a new international literature prize launched by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD).
The prize, awarded at a ceremony at the Bank’s headquarters in London on 10 April, was created last year by the EBRD, in partnership with the British Council and the London Book Fair (LBF).
The €20,000 prize will be split between the author and translator.
The EBRD Literature Prize champions the literary richness of its regions of operations, which include almost 40 countries from Morocco to Mongolia, Estonia to Egypt. It was also created to illustrate the importance of literary translation and to introduce the depth and variety of the voices and creativity from these regions to a wider global audience.
Read the full story here.
NEARLY three years since Jeremy Corbyn became Labour leader, his standing has drastically changed. His opponents in the parliamentary party are a lot quieter. The Labour Party apparatus is at last being reshaped to match the new reality. Recent polls indicate Labour has a real chance of winning a general election. Today millions of people are invested in the idea of a Jeremy Corbyn-led Labour government. That raises a new challenge — how to maintain and strengthen the unity of the diverse forces that got us this far.
Read the full article here here.
I’m sitting in a Polish airport less than a fortnight after the Grenfell Tower blaze when an email pings into my phone. It’s from a publisher friend asking if I’ll change my mind about editing an anthology of writing about London. When he first asked, a couple of years earlier, I dithered and decided no: the world really didn’t need another book about this most documented city. But this time he’s more pressing. He’s been chatting with his daughter, ‘and she said, “You’d be mad not to do it now.”’.
Read the full essay here.
Listen to Alex Nunns on the pivotal moments in Corbyn’s leadership, from the campaign that rocketed him to the head of his party on a tide of anti-austerity anger and socialist hope back in 2015, to his miraculous rescue of a political project that only a year ago seemed helplessly on the brink of ruin.
Listen to the conversation here.
Listen to Alex Nunns chatting with the hosts of Media Democracy about the media’s treatment of Jeremy Corbyn and the Corbyn movements use of social media to circumvent traditional media channels.
Listen to the conversation here.
“People want magic. We’re all looking for transcendence…but we’re still not finding it.” —WikiLeaks and the Age of Transparency author Micah Sifry, last night at McNally Jackson, talking about our fascination with new technology (and why we’re simultaneously consumed by it and disappointed with it).
Look for the video of the event on C-SPAN’s Book TV. Read more about the event on This OR That: The OR Books Blog.
Why I Left My Publisher in Order to Publish a Book, Doug Rushkoff
I’m getting more questions about my latest book than about any other I’ve written. And this is before the book is even out—before anyone has even read the galleys.
That’s because the questions aren’t about what I wrote, but about how I ended up publishing it: with an independent publisher, for very little money, and through a distribution model that makes it available on only one website. Could I be doing this of sound mind and my own volition? Why would a bestselling author, capable of garnering a six-figure advance on a book, forgo the money, the media, and the mojo associated with a big publishing house?
Read more in Arthur Magazine
Chris Lehmann is a conspicuously over-employed editor and cultural critic. He’s a co-editor of Bookforum, a deputy editor for the Yahoo news blog The Upshot, a columnist for the Awl, a contributing editor for The Baffler, and a guitarist and singer for the band The Charm Offensive. He’s also just penned a book, Rich People Things, which will be published this fall by OR books. We recently caught up with Mr. Lehmann via email to discuss the how his blog column became a book, why he considers himself an economic populist, and what we talk about when we talk about class in America.
Read more at bookforum.com.
In New York City this week, an institution is being accused of using Islam to subvert American culture—but this time, it’s on the other side of the East River. The controversy over Brooklyn College’s Common Reader program doesn’t hold a candle to the Ground Zero mosque debacle—thankfully, Sarah Palin has yet to tweet on the subject—but it’s gotten more than a few people riled up in the past few days. The most riled might be Bruce Kesler: the conservative blogger and Brooklyn College alum wrote the college out of his will when they assigned Moustafa Bayoumi’s “How Does It Feel To Be A Problem? Being Young and Arab in America” to all incoming freshmen.
Read more in the New Yorker.
Last week Chris Lehmann, Bookforum editor and Managing Editor of Yahoo’s News Blog, announced the launch of his new book, Rich People Things. The book was born out of his long-running column of the same name for The Awl, the popular blog run by former Gawker editors Alex Balk and Choire Sicha, which posts highbrow commentary and sometimes bear videos.
In February, Lehmann secured a book deal based on the columns, which examine the institutions of modern capitalism and a provide “glimpse into how the top one percent maintains an iron grip on almost half of America’s financial wealth.” Last week, Rich People Things became available for preorder, with the release date for preorders slated for September 15. Fans of Lehmann’s column have already been clamoring to order the book — if Lehmann’s columns are any indication, the book promises to be full of his signature mix of biting satire and sharp prose.
This week, I spoke to Lehmann about the book, the column, and the events that led him to write about so-called “Rich People Things” — and Lehmann also provided an excerpt of a chapter for Mediaite readers.
Read more at Mediaite.com.
